Forbes Top Ten Most Powerful People Include Bill Gates and Google Founders

Forbes has just released it’s ranking of the worlds most powerful people and as many of you could already guess the usual world leaders rank the highest on the list. Number one was Russia’s Vladimir Putin, then United States President Barack Obama, third is China’s President Xi Jinping with number 4 belonging to Pope Francis. It is number 7 and 9 from the technology sector that is pretty interesting.

Forbes number 7 on the list is none other than Microsoft founder Bill Gates. The richest man in the world just barely ahead of Mexican telecommunications giant Carlos Slim is worth a cool 81.4 billion. The self made tech billionaire has recently gotten more involved with Microsoft as CEO Steve Ballmer has stepped down to own a basketball team. But since 2000, Bill and Melinda Gates through the Gates Foundation have given away 30 billion of their fortune to fight Polio and Malaria in third world countries. That type of money to do the good Bill does has landed him on the Forbes #7 most powerful people in the world.

Just making the Forbes Top Ten list is the founders of Google Larry Page and Sergey Brin. Google, which is the common term for searching for anything on the internet, has a dominating lead with 65% of the global online searches. While Sergey leads the super secret Google X division it is Larry that has been very active in long term strategy development for Google and also buying up companies like the 3.2 billion dollar acquisition of Nest that makes programmable thermostats. We we wonder too how long it will be before we see ads running on our thermostats.

It’s noteworthy to mention that missing from the list is anyone related to Apple. It is possible that should have Steve Job’s been around today that he could have made the list but now that Apple is run by Tim Cook, there is still not that Steve Jobs dominating personality which I think is inherent in all the top ten leaders. With Tim Cook’s recent admission, even though it was widely assumed that he was gay, he now becomes the most prominent leader of gay rights and acceptance. It still remains doubtful that he will ever emerge from his super secretive private life and resistance to be in the public eye to become the leader Steve Jobs was.